This year's high school graduation exam takes place about two weeks earlier than last year. The scale of this year's exam is larger than in previous years when 1.22 million candidates registered to take the exam, about 2,500 exam sites with 50,000 exam rooms and about 200,000 people participating in service. The above figures show that this is no longer a story of the education sector alone, but a complex operational problem related to many levels, many sectors and many unpredictable situations.
At this time, preparation work is being urgently and synchronously deployed in many localities. Not only stopping at ensuring exam questions, exam rooms or invigilator personnel, a series of contingency scenarios have been developed very early: Responding to storms, power outages, flooding, traffic congestion, fires and explosions, technology incidents, especially preventing and detecting fraud using high-tech equipment.
For example, Hanoi is considering a plan to reduce the impact from construction projects to avoid traffic congestion for candidates. Ho Chi Minh City develops scenarios to respond to flooding, heavy rain and technology incidents. Ha Tinh trains in identifying high-tech fraud devices, and prepares plans for extreme weather. Phu Tho establishes inter-provincial on-duty points to handle situations arising after border mergers. Nghe An applies artificial intelligence in supporting review and learning analysis for students...
The preparation for the exam in localities reflects an important change in management thinking: Instead of handling when incidents occur, the education sector is proactively identifying risks to prevent them in advance. The national exam is not only seen as a professional education activity, but is approached as a management system with the requirement to forecast, coordinate and control risks at a high level.
This change also stems from the reality that the risks to an exam are becoming more and more complicated than before. If many years ago, the main concern revolved around exam room regulations or marking errors, now, pressure comes from many sides: Fraudulent devices are increasingly sophisticated, unusual weather, overloaded urban infrastructure or the risk of technology fraud in the context of digital transformation.
In that context, the Ministry of Education and Training's continuous emphasis on the spirit of "early, remote" preparation is not only a professional requirement, but also reflects a new approach in education governance. A safe exam no longer depends on quick response after an incident, but depends on predictability and risk reduction from the beginning.
The success of the exam is that millions of candidates entered the exam room in a stable state of mind, and all stages took place normally. But behind that "normality" is the huge workload of the entire system.
When a national exam is operated by risk management thinking, it is also a sign that education management is gradually becoming more professional, more proactive and more adaptable to the increasingly unpredictable fluctuations of modern society.
